The Fear

For a while there's been a big hoo-hah about a plan to introduce government ID cards that will be mandatory for all UK citizens. As it stands now, UK nationals are not required to carry any ID while just walking around in public.
Although there is no federal law in the US requiring people to produce ID on demand from police officers, there are a variety of statutes authorizing police to hold, detain or arrest individuals for failing to identify themselves on demand. Now, whether or not that goes beyond just giving one's name and address is not entirely clear to me. But the general rule is that in the United States the police do have the power to stop and search anyone at any time provided they can offer a reasonable justification to do so. While I think that agreeing to be searched, especially while at the business end of a gun or baton, seems like a ridiculous way to help keep streets safe, it would technically be at the request of an officer. And at least one state I know of specifically says that refusing to assist an officer is a crime.
All of which is to say that while you're not technically required to carry documents that support your claims of who you are while in the US, it is easily within the powers of an officer of the peace to make things rather unpleasant for you at any given time should you not produce those documents upon request.
I don't suppose that I should be too surprised, then, by the steps taken in the UK to start requiring non-UK citizens to carry ID. Not to over dramatize things, but I suspect that the rise in interest in keeping track of who's going where and when isn't going to subside any time soon. And this current shot is aimed at, surprise surprise, foreigners.
Should I be upset that, as an outside-type-person, I'd be required to carry id at all times in the UK? I guess that abiding by the laws of the land I choose to enter, as opposed to the one I'm born in, leaves me little ground for dissent. But I can't say I'm particularly pleased at the prospect of
1) toting around a card with detailed biometric information about me that seems to be easily hackable,
2) being made vulnerable to arrest and deportation simply for not carrying a card
3) being marked as separate from any other "law-abiding" person simply for being born somewhere else.
But then, I guess there are a lot of things that don't particularly please me...

National appeal. Or Emma Peel. Whatever.

I know I've said it a bunch of times before, but Japan was a crazy-wack-cartoon-opera of a country. It was absurd and dignified and too often surreal to be as bad as it seemed. There were so many things about that place that were just unimaginable in an American context that it was easy to find something fascinating. Sport as art? Check. Writing as spiritual exercise? Got it. Mutant-grasshopper-cyborg as cultural hero? Of course, haven't you been paying attention?

Somehow I expected to stumble into something like that in England. Some sort of British cultural item that would be fascinating and endearing and would give me a entry point from which to start getting into life here. Maybe not anything as immediately satisfying as, say, Sapporo-style ramen, but something, right? I mean, besides cricket. Which seems to be something that England can't really claim as a specialty anymore anyway...